A Luann Fantasy
by beb
Summary: When Luann's Australian boyfriends says he returning home he asks her not to come to the airport. Is it becauses he's not really returning to the land down under. Luann decides to gather a few friends together to investigate. A story outline.


Luann is another newspaper comic strip that I follow, though sometimes I wonder why. It is the story of a 16 year old girl, her life and loves, mostly her over-wrought angst. Since this is a newspaper strip she has been 16 like forever. The point is that nothing in the strip is ever going to change, or change much. A couple years ago an Australian surfer boy, Quill, entered the strip to be Luann's latest boyfriend. Except they decided to play it cook and just be friends. Well it time for Quill to leave and the transition has been remarkable clubfooted.

Once, the the past he and Luann made a song together. He provided the music, she looked through years of poetry in her diary for lyrics. So he calls and suggests that they made another song. He comes over. Luann's parents are gone for a very specific period of time so she had the house to herself. I don't recall Quill bringing his guitar, a key element to making a new song. But that's alright because has traded in her usual loose, pull-over short sleeve blouse for a black tank-top. This is the clearest she can come to cleavage in a family strip, I guess. She leads Quill up to her room and confesses that she isn't happy with this "just friends" pact. Quill kisses her. The next panel shows their feet in a way that suggests they're lying on their backs, on Luann's bed, motionless. This seems unlikely but we are talking about a newspaper strip. After a moment when they seem ready for round two, Quill gets a call from his father telling him to come home right now! When Luann asks what's the matter Quill explains that his family is returning to Australia.

Now the way the daily was written it sounded like he was late for the plane but it turns out that they won't leave till next week. Quill hurries out and the next day tried to squash Luann's plans to see him off at the airport. "We already had the perfect good-bye," he say. And that's where matters stand as I write.

This is incredible unrealistic. Who waits until the last minute to tell one's friends that they are going away forever? Why would Quill's father need him to come home immediately when, judging from the sequence he's been at Luann's house only ten minutes and left his house probably no more than a half-hour earlier. And, since he seems like a good boy, he would have gotten his parent's permission to go over to Luann's before going. And "We've already had the perfect good-bye"? What kind of crap is that. Unless he's implying that he and Luann did it somehow between panels. The sort of send off many a girl gave their GI boyfriends before they went off to war.

Now if this were a Hickcock movie all the ridiculous actions were part of a covert plot to confuse and mislead Luann as to Quill's actual identify and intentions, a thought inspired by Luann's switch from a plain white blouse to a black (sexual) tank top. Which suggested an outrageous storyline that could occupy the strip for several months while not actually changing anything in the end.

It starts when Luann goes the the airport anyway to see Quill off, only to find that neither he nor his family were on that flight or any other flight booked that day. Feeling that she might have been had Luann goes over to Quill's house, a place she's never been to before. He's gone but the way the house has been trashed suggests that it was frat house more so than the house of an Australian businessman. In the house she finds three clues to where Quill might have gone - A post card from The Grand Canyon, a tourist brochure from Seattle and part of a telephone bill that shows Quill making a lot of phone calls to LA - and vows to track him down!

She convinces Bernice, a mousy, nerdy girlfriend with glasses and frizzy hair, and Delta, an elegant black girl with big ambitions in public service, to go along with her. Problem they have no car. But Tiffany, Luann's eternal rival and a model wannabe, does so they talk her into coming. Tiffany, in turn, asks Crystal, her BFF, a sleek looking gothic chick, into coming. Knute, a surfer/slacker/hippie and sort-of boyfriend to Crystal, hears about the road trip and invites himself along because - "road trip!" Earlier Luann has asked Gunther along, a nerd, wimpy boy with a passion for fashion designing and clothes making. Gunther has a crush on Luann. But, despite evidence to the contrary, Luann is convinced that she can do better than Gunther. She asked him along just in case they need to lift heavy objects. While Delta discovers that there are already six people in the Tiffany's car she decides that, while six is company, seven is definitely a crowd and stays home. Funding the trip is TJ, Luann's brother's best friend, a swathy man of dubious origins, dubious intentions and a surprising amount of money for never working.

As so the trip begins.

As a newspaper strip they would stop at various landmarks along the way to the Grand Canyon, preferably in cities where the newspaper runs Luann. Story-wise we would start with Gunther showing Luann one over-the-top, gaudy gown after another, repeating his seeming lack of taste he displayed in a beauty contest story-line. After a while Luann explodes and asked "Are you gay or what?" But we never hear his answer because just as he starts to speak, Knute, who is driving, shouts, "this song is awesome" and turns the radio up to eleven, drowning out whatever it was Gunther was going to say. But whatever it was, things between Gunther and Luann have chilled and Gunther takes to the backseat, sitting next to Tiffany, showing her his clothing designs. Tiff, displaying her obliviousness to things not Tiffany-related, things these are great designs and makes plans with Gunther to open a fashion boutique for his clothes someday.

Now if this were a manga and not a newspaper strip there would the mandatory ecchi incidents, like one night Knute walks into the girls motel room, thinking it's the boy's and finding the girls in their underwear comparing breasts. There's apparently a lot of girl-on-girl breast grabbing in manga. it's weird. And of course the other mandatory scene would have Gunther walk into the open-air hot springs while it is still the women-only time period. Since such hot springs bathhouses are rare in the US, so we would have to go with something else. Such as: Luann is restless one night and walks out to the closed swimming pool only to find Gunther there, with his ever-present sketchpad. He can't sleep either. They talk for a while, making up for Luann accusing him of being gay. She suddenly suggests they go skinny-dipping in the pool. She pulls off her shirt and shorts and reaches to pull off Gunther's clothes because he's being shy. Suddenly they hear a noise and find that Crystal and Knute are entering the pool area as well. They are wearing only large pool towels, and it's pretty evidence that they're planning to go skinny-dipping as well. While skinny dipping for two sounded like fun, skinny-dipping for four would be just awkward. Luann pulls her clothes back on and the four return to their cabins. The minute they leave Tiffany explodes from the pool gasping for breath and wondering how ninja were supposed to be able to breath through a fricking tiny soda straw. The next panel would show wet feet approaching Gunther's abandoned chair, followed by Tiffany picking up her bikini from under Gunther's chair. Dressed she picks up the page ripped out of Gunther's sketchbook. It shows a woman reclining on a chaise lounge. The drawing is very half-finished but from the woman's hair style it's obviously Tiffany, and she's obviously naked.

But this isn't a manga so none of this would ever happen.

They get to the Grand Canyon, do some touristy stuff while looking around for a clue that Quill was ever here. What they find is a signature in a guest book for one "Quill Masefield, 23", which is not the last name he gave Luann. The signature was dated three years before, before he had come to Luann's hometown, and if that is the same Quill, it would make him 26, not the 16 everyone thought he was. Just below is signature is "and Emily Thompson, Seattle, WA" writing by the same pen but in a different, womanish, hand.

Off they go to Seattle with adventures along the way. Say a suddenly snowfall in the middle of summer as they are crossing the continental divide, with Tiffany not only lacking in any kind of warm clothes, but unable to get the top up on her convertible.

In Seattle they are unable to find Emily Thompson but stumble into a a pair of girls making an outdoor podcast (nudge nudge). One of the girl's brother recalls a girl named Emily Thompson but thinks she went to Hollywood to make her fortune.

So it's back to the car. On the trip down the coast Tiffany demands that they stop for a pee-break but there are no rest areas, or restaurants to use. She insists they stop along aside the road so she can run into the deep forest there. Her squat is interrupted by the sounds of a large animal moving around. She runs away, gets lost, runs into a bear, turns to run the other way and runs into another large hairy creature, one she never sees clearly but we're to assume it's Bigfoot, who drives off the bear, then carries Tiffnay to the side of the road where she's found. She tells her story and they wonder if she met Bigfoot but there's no way to ever tell.

Finally they get to LA where Gunther tries out his mad Librarian skills. He calls the number listed on the partial phone bill and woman answers "Chunder Productions. How may I direct your call?" He immediately hangs up and logs onto a library computer and searchs for Chunder Production, finding not only an address, but a map to the place. But he forgot to look up that Chunder Production actually does.

Chunder Productions turns out to be a small office building on a street full of obscure production companies. They burst in and find Quill there, sitting around in the lobby with a bunch of other guys in their mid-twenties. He's wearing a scraggly beard now, tight cut black suit and narrow tie. The second he sees Luann he takes off running, with her in hot pursuit. Crystal approached the receptionist and finds out that Chunder Production makes reality TV shows for syndication in Australia. The man Luann is chasing is that star of "G'Day, Yank" where he poses as a high school or college age student, picks up girls to date and secretly videos all their embarrassing moments. By the time the receptionist finished explaining the set up for "G'Day Yank" Luann comes stalking back into the lobby, dusting her hands. She passes straight out to Tiffany's car, a smile of satisfaction on her face. Quill comes in a moment later, with two black eyes. His mates laugh, pull up some professional recording equipment and record his approach. "Looks like you got beat up by a girl, mate," one of the recording crew laughs.

"Our work here is done," Crystal says herding the others out of the building. Tiffany remains behind for a moment, heart-broken because she had figured that after Luann had finished breaking up with Quill she'd have a shot at him. But it turns out that he's a creepy older man, who couldn't prevent get beaten up by a girl.

Gunther, however is incredibly excited. While all that was going on he had bumped into the art director for the company and had shown him some of his costumes and the man had bought one on the spot, and given him an introduction to a game show art director who might be interested in some of his other designs. They're not so gay as Luann thought, their quasi-Bob Mackie

Eventually they return to where ever it is they live, and no one seems to realize that they've been gone all summer. School is about to start the next day. And there Luann meets her next boyfriend, a quiet boy with a foreign (European) accent and the whitest, least tanned skin she had ever seen. He introduces himself as Barnabus - er, Barney, no, Barry - Barry Collins, and he had bought the old mansion outside of town.

And so live goes on.

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Dec 1, 2012 - I had fun writing this and thought a few people might enjoy reading it. But 50 people last month? Are there that many fans of Luann DeGRoot on Fan fic? Or are people coming here thinking it's some other Luann. I'm not asking for a review but I an interested if the 139 people who have viewed this page since I first posted are fans of the Luann newspaper strip.


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